


washed in the tide of his breathing

by crownsandbirds



Series: so, darling, play your violin (it's what you live for) [3]
Category: Given (Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, no surprises there, ugetsu breaks things but thats like his gimmick so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/pseuds/crownsandbirds
Summary: "Most people don’t like Ugetsu because everything with him feels like fighting. Because he’ll always, always end up being the most goddamn difficult person they’ve ever met. Because he’s so impossibly easy to fall in love with, and so absurdly hard to love.And Akihiko loves him so much he thinks he’ll go crazy sometimes."





	washed in the tide of his breathing

**Author's Note:**

> "I don't need the city, and I  
> Don't need proof  
> All I need, darling  
> Is a life in your shape  
> I picture it, soft  
> And I ache." 
> 
> (strawberry blonde - mitski)

The thing about Ugetsu is that most people don’t really like him. 

They love his music, obsess over it - they fall in love with the way his beautiful fingers touch his violin and the way his hair falls over his eyes when he’s playing a concerto. They fall in love with how his back arches towards the music he’s coaxing gently out of the strings, and with the shifts in his expression, from the arrogant upwards curve of his mouth to the slightly parted lips as if he’s tilting his face for a kiss. Ugetsu Murata, the violin prodigy and his black eyes and the way his suit hugs his waist; and all everyone wants to do is rush to the stage and pin him to the floor and shatter his pretty composure. There’s something about Ugetsu that invites for adoration and violence, something that prods mockingly at the core of someone’s consciousness and forces it out into the open. 

But that only when he’s playing. 

The thing about years is that they drawl on and go by and establish intimacy, and knowledge, and all those things people like to say are important in a relationship but that will, just as easily, destroy any set of well-meaning people who ever thought they could make this work. 

Akihiko has known Ugetsu for years, and he  _ knows _ why most people don’t really like him. 

Akihiko is only human. When he looks at Ugetsu playing his violin, he thinks about taking him by the hips and devouring his mouth until there’s blood trickling down his chin and dripping on his beautiful landlord’s uncannily polished floor tiles. He thinks about ripping his perfect suits to pieces. He thinks about how Ugetsu throws things when he's mad, about how he's broken more than one glass and thrown a good amount of music stands to the floor, and how sex is always so goddamn good when he's in his destructive moods. He thinks about it and he does it, takes him by the arrogant chin and throws him on the bed and fucks him until both their throats go hoarse and his back is stinging like hell because  _ of course _ Ugetsu is a scratcher. Of course. 

Ugetsu is a scratcher, and a vicious one, at that. He has drawn non-metaphorical blood from Akihiko’s back more than once, and he left a small, white scar at the junction between his neck and shoulder a few months ago, and Akihiko would love to be able to lie to himself and say he doesn’t feel some degree of stupid manly pride when he remembers he managed to get under Ugetsu’s skin and make him feel enough pleasure to break through his polite facade and expose the little shards of cruelty underneath. 

Ugetsu is also a biter, both in sex and out of it; he enjoys snagging Akihiko’s skin between his teeth and  _ pulling _ just for the delight of getting his pained reaction, enjoys pressing his canines against the scar he himself left months ago, a needle-like reminder of his weird ownership mark. Ugetsu is a sadist in the most casual of ways; he likes getting a reaction, likes  _ forcing _ a reaction, loves it when Akihiko is deep inside him and he whines so sweetly and arches up for a kiss and Akihiko indulges it because he’ll have to be dead and buried in a grave before he ever manages to stop himself from indulging Ugetsu, and when their lips are sliding against each other, Akihiko will jerk back and there’ll be a throbbing, painful wound on his lower lip from where Ugetsu trapped it between his sharp, mean little fangs. And then Ugetsu will laugh that one giggle of his that sounds like beautiful wind chimes, not the one that sounds like he committed a homicide and waltzed with the corpse, and not the one that makes the other person double-check everything they’re wearing and everything they’ve said so far in order to find whatever hairline fracture it is that Ugetsu is mocking them about. 

And then, Akihiko will have lost. 

Most people don’t like Ugetsu because everything with him feels like fighting. Because he’ll always, always end up being the most goddamn difficult person they’ve ever met. Because being with him often feels like a degree of frustration so bone-deep and violent it can only be soothed by kissing him long enough for him to shut the fuck up for a change. Because he’s so impossibly easy to fall in love with, and so absurdly hard to love. 

And Akihiko loves him so much he thinks he’ll go crazy sometimes. 

He’s heard about this type of love before. The obsessed-ghost type of love,  _ Wuthering Heights _ type of love, with moors and old castles and opera music and people threatening to kill themselves and tainted portraits hung on dark walls. Sometimes he very nearly convinces himself he can get away from this, and then Ugetsu will do that thing where he sneaks up from behind and hugs him from the back and presses a kiss and a little bite on the soft skin between his shoulder blades, and Akihiko has to close his eyes and take deep breaths before he catches himself turning around and putting Ugetsu on top of the kitchen counter and fucking him until he cries. 

(It very rarely works. Ugetsu sounds beautiful when he’s sobbing with pleasure, and Akihiko is a very,  _ very _ weak man). 

It’s been years, and it often feels like an entire lifetime and then some. Like they’ve done this before, in other lives, in other universes where they turned out as fucked-up as they are in this one, like Ugetsu is a ghost toying with the sand of his dreams at night and breathing on the back of his neck during the day. 

Fucking gorgeous ghost, at that.

But Ugetsu is flesh and bone, in the end; one time, he’d slipped on a music sheet left to lie around on the floor, and smashed his forehead against the corner of his coffee table, and there’d been  _ so much blood _ . Akihiko had driven him to the hospital (and for someone as painfully, infuriatingly dramatic as Ugetsu is, he’d been quiet, pale and silent in the passenger’s seat of his car, holding a blood-soaked towel above his eyebrow) and held his shaking hand between both of his while the wound was cleaned up and stitched back, the two edges of skin forced back together by black thread. 

And while they held hands and Ugetsu took deep breaths and the needle went back and forth in his skin, Akihiko could unmistakably feel his heartbeat through his elegant wrist. Quick and shuddering and alive and so very  _ human _ .

-

“You know, that one friend of yours,” Ugetsu starts suddenly as he rinses a glass in the sink. 

Akihiko raises his eyes from where he’s lathering a plate with dish soap. They have this bit of their routine down to a science; Akihiko lathers the dishes, and Ugetsu rinses them with water and leaves them to dry, because he hates how rough and dry his hands feel if he touches dish soap, and Akihiko doesn’t really see a difference one way or the other (and he also has this borderline-religious unhealthy devotion when it comes to Ugetsu’s hands, but that’s no one’s fucking business other than his own). “Which one?” 

Akihiko is the type of person who doesn’t want his foods to touch each other in his plate, and, therefore, he doesn’t want his friends/bandmates to come inside a 200-meter radius close to whatever it is Ugetsu is to him now. 

Ugetsu has teased him about it before, and usually he’ll bend over backwards like a whore for Ugetsu’s teasing because it’s so sharp and painful - he has yet to fully recover from the way he always refuses to go watch Akihiko’s performance unless Akihiko demonstrates confidence that he’s in a level high enough to be  _ worthy of Ugetsu’s time _ \- but in this aspect, he refuses to yield. He doesn’t want to go through the certainly painful experience that would occur as a consequence of Ugetsu’s usual disdain for everyone in his line of sight and of Haruki’s and Uenoyama’s disapproval of Ugetsu’s coldness, in turn. 

“The kid who sang,” Ugetsu says as he rises the glass up against the sunlight streaming through the windows to inspect for any remaining stains. “The cute gay one.” 

Oh. Mafuyu.

Akihiko instinctively takes a step to the side, a bit further from Ugetsu. “What about him?” 

Ugetsu takes the plate from Akihiko’s hand and starts rinsing it, his fingers nervous with the need to keep active. Ugetsu’s fingers usually get restless when they’re not playing a violin. 

“Keep an eye on him.”

“Why?” 

Ugetsu turns to stare at him properly, then, and takes a step closer, puts his face really close to Akihiko’s, and Akihiko loses himself in his eyes and falls in love with him again like he does in a daily basis, and it takes him a second to stop staring at his pretty lips and pay attention to what he’s actually saying. 

“Because he looks ripe for heartbreaking,” Ugetsu says. 

Akihiko stares at the lovely curve of his ear, the sharp cut of his jaw, the small scar that goes across his right eyebrow when he hurt himself and got stitched back together, and mumbles, “You have experience in the area, don’t you?” 

Ugetsu smiles, cups Akihiko’s cheek with his still-humid hand. “Oh, Akihiko. Will you ever learn?” 

There’s a beat as they stare into each other’s eyes - Ugetsu looks infinitely patient and scornful in his patience, his eyes lidded. Akihiko drops the dishsoap and the sponge, takes his hips in his hands, making it a point to ruin Ugetsu’s expensive sweatpants with soap, turns him and slams the small of his back against the edge of the counter. 

“You  _ brute _ ,” Ugetsu chuckles against Akihiko’s lips, wraps his arms around his neck. “You love throwing me around.” 

“Shut up,” Akihiko growls. 

Ugetsu tilts his head back and laughs, before staring back into Akihiko’s eyes again, his lips half-parted with the painfully obvious weight of seduction that anyone with a pulse would fall for. “Yes, sir,” he drawls out, licks his lips, and Akihiko hates the shiver of pleasure that runs down his spine, hates the boy in his arms, hates himself, and hates how, in the end, he’ll fall in bed tonight with him and fall in love again tomorrow. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> apparently they're my go-to subject whenever i want to write and have no idea what to write about. this thing is a mess. im sorry


End file.
